I used to follow STABLE. Now I follow RELEASE. The ease-of upgrading via binary patches appeals to me.

Every one of my systems, or so I thought until today, has an entry like this in /etc/crontab:

# fetch updates
28 10 * * * root /usr/sbin/freebsd-update cron

This entry will run freebsd-update every day, checking in for any updates. If found, they will be downloaded and you can install them later. Each of my systems does this at a different time; there’s no need to slam the FreeBSd servers all at once.

More importantly, when an update is found, you will get emails such as this one: